1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a real time multi-platform communications system and more particularly to an integrated real time presence and availability based multi-platform communications system wherein groups of user maintain intra-group communications.
2. Background Description
Personal productivity applications or tools are well known and readily available for everyday use. Examples of such personal productivity tools include state of the art communications tools such as instant messaging applications and e-mail, as well as personal information manager (PIM) software. These personal productivity tools are available as individual stand alone applications (e.g., America Online (AOL) Instant Messenger (AIM) from AOL, Eudora from Qualcomm Inc., and Palm Desktop from Palm, Inc.) or, integrated in a single office suite, e.g., Microsoft (MS) Outlook in MS Office from Microsoft Corporation. Further, personal productivity tools are available for a wide range of platforms, ranging from small hand held devices such as what are known as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and web enabled or third generation (3G) cell phones to larger personal computers (PC) and even to distributed or Internet based platforms.
Recently, full featured multi-platform communications applications, such as OpenScape from Siemens Information and Communications Networks, Inc., have integrated and adapted such personal productivity tools, including both voice and text based communications applications, into a single seamless collaborative workplace communications portal. These multi-platform communications applications tie together phone, voice mail, e-mail, text messaging, calendaring, instant messaging, and conferencing services allowing user groups to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. Dispersed workgroup members or application users can communicate with one another without being constrained by geography, office location, or time zone. These multi-platform communications applications streamline business communications and improve user productivity, allowing workgroup members or users to minimize time wasted, e.g., by reducing or eliminating time spent playing phone tag. As a result, an enterprise employing such a multi-platform communications application can realize significant cost savings by reducing wasted employee time.
Thus, there is a need for a way to notify business associates of availability status, automatically and in real time.